It's either A or B

Now, for the record, when hiring for entry level positions I personally evaluate 0-4 years of experience equally. I would hire someone who has a good attitude, is likable and intelligent with no experience over someone who is a wet rag with 4 years experience every time.

See, that seems like the most sensible way to hire, but definitely isn’t the way many companies hire. And my “for the record” is that none of this applies in my field, so I’ve been fortunate enough to not have to deal with this. My frustration is just borne from the experiences or friends and family.

Most hiring managers are just that: managers. A vast majority of managers look at their team as subordinate resources to be consumed so that the manager can have good results for their boss. The good managers know that they are the most useless person on the team and that the others are assets into which investments should be made. They usually end up with even better results to report but it takes a certain self-reflection to achieve and most people don’t have that natural inclination. So don’t hold your breath for “sensible.”

I mean- it also somewhat depends on the field and job as well and can have less to do with training and more to do with trust. Say that your job is public or outward facing? Have you seen those scandals where a company has gotten in trouble or bad press because a single employee went off the hinges on Twitter or in media? Handling the twitter account may be an “entry level” job in the PR or social media department..... but your degree tells me nothing about your JUDGMENT. if you have some experience- if you stayed in one place without then letting you go for being dangerously poor in judgment- I can have more confidence in you.

Many jobs put you in charge of machines or data worth HUGE sums. With a small mistake and the right conditions it’s possible to screw up a database or program in a way that costs hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars and can set you back years. Your entry level database maintenance or even data entry person can REALLY mess you up- especially if your database admin is also inexperienced and missed something, or didn’t know users or processes well enough and made some mistake.

I once worked for a company who hired a director in charge of networking who was disastrously inexperienced. There were no issues. The network was pretty stable and worked. Until they let him go and hired someone who knew what they were doing. And then a server migration and network switchover and improvements came. The solutions the previous guy had used to make the network run were patchwork hackery that any experienced network guy would tell you not to do unless was an absolute unavoidable and emergency.

As soon as they started getting into the relatively simple process things started to unravel. The company lost many millions in man hours of teams working around the clock, delays, and service outages effecting customers and internal ability to do business. It was so bad they had to hire the guy back as a consultant to tell another consultant who’s the kind of guy google calls in an emergency (not cheap) what the hell he did so they could sort it all out and fix it.

So inexperience problems can be compounded when you have other inexperienced people working together. Sometimes it isn’t that the company only hires experienced people- it’s that they already have some inexperienced people in a role or department and have an opening because an experienced person was promoted or left and moved on. They aren’t looking to fill the role but to fill the place of an employee so their team can continue to function- and know they need SOMEONE who they can have confidence knows what they are doing.

This is common for mechanical engineers and engineering technicians too. Many industrial and aerospace processes use machines that are very expensive. Vacuum pumps and autoclaves and the like- things that if you get even microscopic contamination in are useless and need to go down, and get VERY costly decontamination or replacement. A turbine for a vacuum pump can be $100k or more, and a single mistake operating or maintaining the machine, a single wrong move in shutdown can cause the blades- which are so fragile and spin so fast that they are levitated by magnetic fields- to fly apart destroying the blades and contaminating the pump.

And entry level job for an engineer or technician might involve the basic care and operation of this machine. A fresh grad who’s head is full of textbook knowledge but could be a “nutty professor-“ brilliant and clumsy and careless- isn’t very appealing compared to someone with a proven track record of not destroying precision equipment and shutting down production or research.

The truth is that “entry level” doesn’t mean what people think it means. “Foot in the door” and “entry level” aren’t the same thing. Starting out in the amazon warehouse, or working for their tech support, gaining knowledge of internal systems and processes and industry/enterprise practice, then working up and proving the ability and experience to be promoted into their corporate offices in tech because there’s an internal opening and you have the degree to leverage it is getting your foot in the door. Graduating from college and expecting to be put in charge of millions of dollars or more in responsibility without any idea how it actually works or what can and does go wrong or what to do- that’s not entry level.

Entry level is the entry to a corporate career. It is where you can get into the lowest level of the highest level of an organization. Apple is a good example. Workin at an Apple store and getting familiar with their proprietary software used by employees, their systems and practices- I know many people who have done this, AND gotten degrees, became geniuses, transferred into retain management or working on launches and setting up new stores, and then transferred to corporate as project managers or other roles that require experience in things like managing cross disciplinary teams or logistics and POS knowledge- with strong preference for those who know apples processes.

Now- for many fresh grads or those with degrees who don’t have relevant experience, Apple can be very hard to get into. Even an “entry level” corporate job. Because ENTRY LEVEL corporate pretty much required Apple experience. If you can’t get in to corporate? How do you get experience? Through retail. Through working the Apple kiosk at Best Buy (which- usually gives preference to those who’ve worked in an Apple store!)

Tl:dr- let’s play pretend. You want to go to medical school. They look at your application and say: “you’ve never taken premed courses and the only thing you have that could even apply to this is a year of biology...” You say- “yeah... but I read the books!” They tell you you need more experience in school to go to their school. You huff. I can’t go to school because I don’t have enough experience to go to school?! Then how can I ever get the experience?! Well... go back and do pre med. “they won’t take me because I don’t have a 2 year degree!” Ok. Do that. “They won’t take me because I never went to high school!” Ok. Do that. Or GED. “I can’t! I never graduated elementary school!” Ok. Do THAT. pre med is ENTRY LEVEL for a medical degree- but to get that ENTRY LEVEL spot you still need AT LEAST 6 years of experience in relevant schooling or equivalent.

If the “entry level” of the career path you want requires things you don’t have- you aren’t prepared for entry level in your career. A degree isn’t a ticket to a job. It is often a prerequisite- but no one ever said it was the ONLY prerequisite. Without a degree you’ll probably never become a corporate tax accountant- but having a degree also isn’t a promise you’ll become one. Being an assistant of some sort, being an accountant that isn’t as critical, or for a less elite company or desperate start up or NPO, volunteering- if you have to- work at HR block as a tax accountant. Entry level is the ENTRY LEVEL of a career path. The first step in a higher career. If you can’t reach it that means you still have work to do.